Our house; a few other images from today and nothing more

In case you are curious, this is our house - the place where I live and work, and keep this blog. We moved into this house 27 years ago this month. It was well below zero when we moved in and we had to keep the doors open to haul in our stuff, so the house got very cold.

So did our fingers.

I then sawed and split some of the birch that had been cleared to build the house and made a hot fire in the woodstove.

The heat felt very good as it warmed us from the outside.

Margie made some hot chocolate, which warmed us from the inside. 

Those were good days.

Really, really, good days.

We didn't know how good they were until they became the past.

This is my neighbor, from two houses down. I don't know his name. In February of 2001, I lost my black cat, Little Guy, who eight years earlier had passed from his mother's womb straight into my hands. On a day with about three times the snowfall you see here, he stepped out onto the back porch and I never saw him again.

I searched for him, long and hard. I knocked on every door. I asked everyone I saw if they had seen a black cat. I could hardly bear the loss. 

For weeks afterward, every time this neighbor would see me, he would always ask about that cat.

So I think highly of him, even though I don't know his name.

This is another view of my house, taken from down the street as I finished my walk. I usually come home through the marsh, but I did not feel like it. Margie does not like it when I track snow into the house and I did not want to be scolded, however gently she scolds, and so I came down the road instead of through the marsh.

I always take my shoes off at the door, but the snow would have stuck on my Levis, even up to my knees.

I did not want either to be scolded or to take my pants off at the door, so I came down the road.

I did not build that tall fence.

My neighbor did. He hates cats. He does not like to look at my wrecked airplane, so he built the fence. He often wakes me by revving up the engine to his Harley Davidson in the morning. He doesn't necessarily drive it anywhere, he just sits there and revs up the engine, again and again, so that it does not lock up on him.

We don't talk much. He works for the Alaska Marine Highway and is gone more than he is home.

A kid, apparently on his way home from school, but maybe he is going someplace else. I don't know.

It was warm today, teens and then 20's for awhile, but the wind blew.

I saw this boy, off to the side of Lucille Street, as I was coming home from Wal-Mart. Margie doesn't work there, anymore. She can't, because of her accident. I don't care. I want her to work for me. I work in constant chaos, even when all is calm around me. 

Maybe she can reduce the chaos and increase our income more than she lost by losing her job at Wal-Mart.

I don't know why the boy was down in the snow like that. Maybe he was skiing and fell down. That looks like a ski pole.

I didn't stop to ask. I just snapped and kept going.

I had things to do.

Martigny. She is never allowed to go outside. She doesn't even want to go outside.

Royce - 15 years old or so and the last of the indoor-outdoor cats. I hated to do it, but after Little Guy I never let a new cat go outside unchaperoned - and then only Jim. 

Now that he is growing old, Royce doesn't go outside much anymore and never for very long.

When its cold, he doesn't go out at all. He didn't used to care about the cold. He was born with a good cold-weather coat. Now, he doesn't like the cold.

And there you have it - nothing of consequence, just a few images from today, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.